academy o F sciences] CHIEF GEOLOGIST, NATIONAL SURVEY 177 



Yet hot as was the weather and tiring as were the plans, the chief geologist did all in his 

 power to make the best of a bad matter for his associates. Thus, on August 8, he wrote a long 

 letter to the director of an important State geological survey, recommending for positions there 

 certain members of the national survey who might have to be cut off. When one of the field 

 geologists returned to Washington late Saturday evening a fortnight or so after the disaster in a 

 state of great uncertainty as to his future, Gilbert called on him in person early Sunday morning 

 with the comforting assurance that the director had placed his name on the list of those who 

 were to be retained. To another he wrote in the following kindly spirit : 



Perhaps it is not amiss to say at this time that your reputation at this office for careful economic 

 administration is good, said reputation being based on your accounts, monthly reports, etc. Partly for this 

 reason there lies on the desk of the Chief Clerk a letter from the Director to the Secretary of the Interior recom- 

 mending an increase of your official salary. Unfortunately, our calamities will keep that and other letters of 

 similar tenor from being sent forward to the Secretary, but it may give you some slight consolation to know 

 that there was a spontaneous movement in that direction. 



But there appears to have been another side to the calamity. Although Gilbert evidently 

 felt almost as keenly as Powell himself the misfortune that enforced retrenchment would entail 

 upon many of the survey members, he was philosopher enough to find consolation in certain of 

 its aspects, as is indicated in a letter to a divisional geologist: 



While the Congressional onslaught is disastrous to many individuals, and therefore grieves me greatly, it is 

 not an unmixed evil for the Survey. It will have the effect of winding up shortly one or two investigations 

 which have been too dilatory, and will give opportunity for reconstruction in one or two places where it has been 

 desirable but difficult. 



As to his own demotion from the rank of chief geologist to that of geologist, which took 

 place by congressional enactment in August, 1892, Gilbert could have felt nothing but relief. 

 Yet in the preceding June, when he might have enjoyed that relief and escaped from all adminis- 

 trative work on the survey by resigning from it to accept an offered professorship of geology at 

 Cornell, he did not do so. His feeling at that time was expressed in a letter to a friend : 



Your letter about Cornell versus Washington gives me great consolation in that it states the case very much 

 as I see it. I have never consciously cared for the "renown that comes from running large affairs", and am 

 disposed to think I have not really cared for it as I am perfectly conscious of caring for some other kinds of renown. 

 At any rate I took my present office reluctantly as an accommodation, & my chief reluctance at the thought of 

 leaving it is the difficulty to which you allude of filling the hole. ... if I could name an entirely satisfactory 

 successor — who could be prevailed on — the Major would let me swap back. 



When his demotion came, if it lowered his official standing, it seems at least to have raised 

 him to a higher floor of the Washington office: for about a month later he wrote a member of 

 the survey who still addressed him in his former capacity, saying that the letter received called 

 his attention to the fact that his change of status has not been officially announced, and added : 



Don't trouble yourself as to any questions of etiquette which may be involved, for they make no trouble 

 at this end. When business comes to me under the old title I send it down stairs without comment. 



Faithfully as he had attended to administrative duties while they lasted, he was undoubtedly 

 glad to be free of them. 



Well may Powell have written in the thirteenth annual report, at the close of Gilbert's 

 supervising service in this troublous time: 



Special obligations are due to Mr. G. K. Gilbert for his arduous labors in administering with skill and success 

 the business affairs of the geologic branch. 



Gilbert's own report in the same volume touched on his personal affairs very briefly: 



Duties in connection with the general work of the branch have left me little time for personal work in the 

 field. 



But he could not immediately escape from the office. A few days after his demotion, 

 when he was impatient to leave Washington for a brief visit to friends in Ithaca, he wrote them : 

 " Tonight I find myself right in the middle of a task that must be finished. Moreover my chief 

 is used up by the strain on his mental resources and his sympathies. My own special work is 

 nearly done but I see that by staying a few days longer I can relieve him from the necessity of 

 staying to look after details after the problems have been solved. . . . Fortunately I am feeling 



